Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office, EPO, Swimming in Billions (Acquired by Selling Monopolies to Mostly Non-European Companies), Cannot Afford Printers and Rewards for Staff

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 19, 2024,
updated Jan 19, 2024

No printers? No problem!

EPO broke, exterminate printers!

Finally, we do not understand how the Office intends to pay on top the outstanding individual bonuses for 2023 performance and make overall payments of € 20,900 mil in 2024 with a budget line of only € 14,248 mil. We request clarification in this respect.

THE EPO's Central Staff Committee wrote to staff a short while ago and one of the many recipients shared a copy with us. This shows that the fiscal catastrophe of Benoît Battistelli has metastasised and is now perpetuated or passed to "other bodies" by António Campinos; they steal and gamble away with people's money while denying them what they deserve. Granting European software patents by breaking the law is bad in its own right; then treating the people who cooperate (out of fear) like trash is the 'icing on the shitcake'.

The new publication was introduced as follows:

Reward Exercise 2024: Open letter to the President

Dear Colleagues,

The President has now submitted to the General Consultative Committee (GCC) his General Guidelines on Rewards 2024 (GCC/DOC 1/2024) to be discussed in the GCC meeting of 31 January 2024.

This year, the Office intends to make payments of rewards closer to performance with one-off effect payments because of the transition. However, according to our understanding, the Office has taken it as an opportunity to reduce comparable budget envelopes in "real" terms.

In preparation of the GCC meeting, the CSC sent an open letter to the President asking for clarifications and comments on our analysis.

A copy of the letter can be found [...]

There are some tables with colours in there, so in order to preserve the data we took screenshots of some portions (complex tables):

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Reference: sc24002cl

Date: 18/01/2024

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY
Mr António Campinos
President of the EPO
ISAR - R.1081
By email: president@epo.org

OPEN LETTER

Rewards Exercise 2024 – Budget Envelope in the Guidelines

Dear Mr President, A Technical Exchange took place on 15 January 2024 between the administration and the staff representation. The present letter aims at ensuring that we have a common understanding on the amendments made to the budget envelope in the upcoming Guidelines on Rewards 2024 and their consequences.

Steps and promotions

According to our understanding, when comparing what is comparable, we note that the budget envelope has not increased when referring to 12 months equivalents and remains below the increased envelope approved by the Council.

Approved by the Council vs Proposed in the Guidelines


Indeed, past budget documents CA/50/xx and CA/D 1/xx, as well as the Guidelines on Rewards GCC/DOC x/xx, mentioned the envelope in terms of 12 months equivalent while payments for the budget year were made only over the 6 months period of July to December.

For the year 2024, these documents mention the envelope in terms of pro-rata with different basis and shall be considered in 12 months equivalents:

Approved by the Council and Proposed in the Guidelines

We note that the Council has approved an increase of the budget envelope from € 14,380 mil for 2023 to € 15,200 mil for 2024 amounting to +5.7%.

The Office proposes in the Guidelines on Rewards a lower budget than the one approved by the Council. And this budget envelope has not increased compared to the previous year when considering the 12 months equivalents and is maintained at the amount of € 11,700 mil.

We conclude that the Office may be rewarding staff earlier with step(s)/promotion, however it is not rewarding staff with more career advancements. When considering that the number of eligible staff remains stable (4.928 in 2023 vs 4.900 in 2024) and that the growth in salary mass due to the salary adjustment is +3,47%, we can conclude that staff is granted less career advancements.

Bonuses (Individual/Strategic)

According to our understanding, when comparing what is comparable, we note that the budget envelope for individual and strategic bonus(es) for 1 performance year have not increased as much as the envelope approved by the Council and remains below it:

Approved by the Council and Proposed in the Guidelines


Indeed, in February 2023, the Office proposed for the Rewards Exercise 2023 (for 2022 performance) in GCC/DOC 3/2023 a budget envelope for individual/collaborative bonuses of € 11,300 mil.

In the course of the Rewards Exercise 2023 in May 2023, the Office replaced the collaborative bonus by the strategic bonus(es) in GCC/DOC 13/2023 and stated (p. 1, last paragraph) no impact on the rewards proposals already made for the individual rewards exercise or the ceiling for the exercise 2023 and that payment would come from remaining funds of the exercise.

Therefore, the budget envelope for 2023 can be considered as referring to the individual bonus for 2022 performance and the strategic bonus(es) for 2023 performance.

The Office intends to pay the individual and strategic bonus(es) for 2024 performance during the course of the year 2024. The individual bonus for 2023 performance is still outstanding and shall be paid at the beginning of the year 2024 (one-off effect).

The comparison shall be made by comparing only the individual and strategic bonus(es) for the 2024 performance with the previous budget envelope:

Approved by the Council and Proposed in the Guidelines

We note that the Council has approved an increase of the budget envelope from € 13,848 mil for 2023 to € 14,248 mil for 2024 amounting to +2.8%.

The budget envelope proposed by the Office for the individual and strategic bonus(es) for 2024 performance only increased by +2.65% compared to the previous year. This increase is lower than the growth in salary mass due to the salary adjustment of +3,47%. The budget envelope is hence reduced in “real” terms.

_____
1 1,28% x € 1.081.950 = € 13,848 mil

2 1,28% x € 1.113.175 = € 14,248 mil


Finally, we do not understand how the Office intends to pay on top the outstanding individual bonuses for 2023 performance and make overall payments of € 20,900 mil in 2024 with a budget line of only € 14,248 mil. We request clarification in this respect.

Conclusion

While we acknowledge that the Office intends to make payments of rewards closer to performance, we regret that the Office has taken it as an opportunity to reduce the comparable budget envelopes in “real” terms.

We thank you in advance for your clarifications and comments on our analysis.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

The Central Staff Committee is keeping its eyes on the ball and it would be good to see the union, SUEPO, returning to industrial action/s. Judging by this past month's comments in IP Kat, practitioners worry about what the UPC and EPO have become. From a constitutional and legal point of view, this is a state of disarray which benefits only the super-rich. The EPO does not serve its mission/s; it serves masters. Only about a third of Europe-wide monopoly (patent) recipients are actually European.

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